18-Year-Old Karoline Heintz Found Dead in Her Jeep - Hidden AirTag Led Police To Her Body

It was supposed to be an ordinary Wednesday night. An 18-year-old had just finished dinner with her family. And when it was over, she walked out to her car. But this wasn't just any drive. 20 minutes down the road, her dorm room was waiting for her. Freshman, ear of college, that independent feeling of having her own space, the first real taste of freedom, the excitement of a clean, fresh start, a new life, a path that still looks wide open. New friends, new relationships, something that's supposed to turn into a future. But it was still the summer. Classes hadn't started yet. And there were still a few more days of normal to enjoy before everything changed. For this young woman, that change would be permanent. Future halted, her life taken. Her family thought she was headed to target on her way back to do some last minute shopping. Nothing anyone would think twice about. Nobody knew that one short detour would put her on a fatal path. A few hours later, her dad is staring at his phone, watching a little dot on a map. That dot isn't a target. It isn't at her dorm. It's blinking in a dark parking lot, and she isn't answering her phone. (upbeat music) So I didn't want to shock you by being in a completely different set. But I am currently in London for CrimeCon UK. So if you're coming to my channel for the first time, this is actually where I'm staying right now in London. Running on no sleep, jet lagged, just getting over a cold from being here. But for those of you that are going to meet me about a week, I am so excited to finally see you in person. I want to take you back to that little dot on the map and to the dad that was staring at it. Earlier that night, around 9.30 p.m., his daughter Caroline left her family's home in Peter's Township, Pennsylvania. Her parents could see her phone's location through the apple sign my iPhone app, but they had also put an Apple air tag inside of her Jeep as an added layer of security, not because they didn't trust her because she was 18, because that's what you do when your parent and your kid is driving off in the dark. So when her dad checked the map, he could see where she went, but it wasn't to target and it wasn't to her dorm room. She had been heading down route 40 towards Scenery Hill and then somewhere along the national pike and it stopped transmitting. No more location data and when her family called and texted, she didn't answer. No, I have a teenager. I know that some of you do as well and I've been a teenager. So it isn't that out of the ordinary. So you start to think of different scenarios. Maybe her battery died. Maybe there's just a dead zone. But if you've ever sat there refreshing an app waiting for that I made it home text message for someone that you love, just to ease your worry and know that they arrived home safely, then you know how quickly those scenarios start to wear thin. The phone was no longer tracking, but the air tag was still working and the air tag wasn't at her dorm. It was in California, Burrow, near a public library on Wood Street in a parking lot that should have been empty at that hour. Just after midnight her father called the police and asked them to go look. A California Burrow officer pulled into that parking lot and saw her jeep right where the air tag said it would be. He checked the area around it first. He swept his flashlight across the lot and into the dark tree line looking for any sign of her. And then he turned his attention back towards the jeep. And before we talk about the nightmare that unfolded because of what he saw inside, we need to talk about who Caroline was because she was so much more than what happened to her. I want you to know her the way the people who loved her knew her. Caroline Jordan Hines was born on July 7th of 2008 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Jared and Leanne Hines. She was their oldest. She was a big sister to her younger sister Casey. And if you have been the oldest or you have one in your family, you know what that role comes with. It's own responsibility. You're the first to do everything. The first to drive, the first to graduate, the first to pack up and leave her college. Your little sisters watching you and trying to figure it all out. And Caroline had a big family rounder. On her dad's side, there were her grandparents, Jean and Laura Hines in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania. And on her mom's side, her grandparents, Larry and Pam Reynolds, down in Midway, West Virginia. There was her aunt and uncle Brian and Melissa McLean, also in Elizabeth and her cousins, Kaylyn and Maddie McLean. That's a lot of people who cheered at her games showed up for graduations and watched this little girl grow up. And Hines family wasn't just close to each other. They showed up for other people as well. The family volunteered with meals on wheels, delivering meals to people in their community who needed help. So Caroline grew up in a family where you took care of other people. And then of course we'll tell you where her kindness came from. She grew up in McMurray, which is a community inside Peter's Township in Washington County, just south of Pittsburgh. Now we'll talk more about what this town is like in just a minute, but for now, just know that this is where Caroline learned to ride a bike, went to school, made friends, and found the thing that would shape her life so much. And that was soccer. Caroline was tall. She was about five foot nine with golden brown hair and a smile that almost everyone who knew her brought up. The people that knew her said she was genuinely kind and determined, especially when it came to soccer. Soccer was Caroline's world. She played club soccer for victory soccer club out of Washington, Pennsylvania. If she wasn't just on the team, she was a long time captain. She wore the number 57 and her coach, Tyler Hamstra, had known her and coach her for about a decade. That means he met her when she was just a kid, eight or nine years old and watched her grow into a young woman when he talked about her, he didn't talk about her stats. He talked about who she was. He said, quote, if the world had several care lines, it would be a much more caring and loyal place, end quote. And then he said something that I think is one of the most beautiful things you can say about another person. He said that she was who we should all drive to be. A little happier, a little more positive, and a lot more kind. And in March of this year, 2026, victory posted photos welcoming her to the team. And in a video from the team's first practice, Caroline was asked what she was most excited about for the season. It wasn't winning. And it wasn't playing in front of college scouts. She said she was most excited to make new friends. That was Caroline. On the field, she played defense. She was a center back, the player in the back line who reads the whole field, who stops attacks before they happen, and keeps everyone organized. It's not a flashy position. You don't always get the highlight reel, all the goals, but everyone on the team knows who they're counting on. She also played in the Pennsylvania West Olympic Development Program, known as ODP, which is where some of the most talented young players in the region get identified and developed. One of her ODP coaches, Marcello Antonelli, described her as extremely competitive, but at the same time very kind. He called her a rock as a center back. And if you've ever played a team sport, you would know that combination is rare. Some players are fierce, and then some are sweet. But Caroline was both. But soccer wasn't her only sport. She played field hockey for Peter's Township High School. And after she was gone, her field hockey team posted a tribute that I want to read to you. Because I think it paints a really clear picture of her. They said, quote, "To no Caroline is to love her." She was kind-hearted, sweet, hardworking, and beautiful inside and out. She was the kind of friend and teammate you could always count on, and someone that was always there for you, always in your corner, and always ready to cheer you on. And they also said she brought comfort laughter and joy to the people around her. She also ran track. She was clearly very athletic. Her track coach, Tim Wu, who coached her in the 800 meters and the four by a hundred relay. And if you know track, the 800 is the hardest race there is. It's two laps around the track, too long to sprint the whole way, and too short to pace yourself comfortably. It hurts. And the four by a hundred is a relay, which means your teammates are counting on you to hand them that baton. Her coach wrote that he'll always remember her smile, no matter their circumstances, and that she was always willing to run and help her teammates. Think about how many kids would try to get out of running the 800-care line, actually volunteered. So I think you're starting to see a pattern here. Whether it was soccer, field hockey, or track, the word that keeps coming up isn't just talented, even though she has. was. It's teammate, loyal, kind, the one that you can count on. The Caroline wasn't just an athlete. She was really smart, and she had her future mapped out. In the spring of 2026, she graduated from Peter's Township High School, and that fall, she was headed to Penn West, California, where she planned to major in biology. She had already been accepted into Leacom, the medical school in Pennsylvania, and that means that before she'd taken a single college class a medical school had already said we see you, and we want you here. Her plan was to finish her biology degree, and then go on to become a physician, a doctor. At 18, Sherady knew that she wanted to spend her life taking care of other people. Now let's talk about the college that she was about to call home. Penn West, California is Pennsylvania, Westerns University campus, in the borough of California, Pennsylvania, has nothing to do with California or Los Angeles or any of that. Locals and longtime alumni still call it Cal U, though. Their teams are the Vulcans, named after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, and the school's colors are red and black. And in July of 2025, a year before all of this happened, Caroline posted a photo of herself on Instagram wearing a Vulcan's t-shirt, announcing her commitment to continue her academic and athletic career, playing soccer at Cal U. Her family said she made that dream come true by becoming a member of California's women's soccer team. Her dream, not just a scholarship, not just a team, but a dream that she worked towards four years on fields all over Western Pennsylvania. So what was Caroline like when she wasn't on the field or studying? Her family shared the things that she loved. And I really like this list because I feel like it's so real, but I'm pretty much going to quote it for Baydom. So if it sounds very specific, that is why they said she loved animals. She had a cute little kitty named Skylar. She loved looking at gorgeous sunsets and the beaches, the feeling of cuddling up in soft blankets and fresh cut flowers. She loved concerts and traveling, and she loved quiet game nights at home with her family. So here she is. She's a star athlete, a future doctor, a team captain, someone a lot of people looked up to, and one of the things she loved the most was just staying home with her family with the people that she loved in playing games. And that's just so grounded to me. She didn't need to be the center of attention. She just liked being with other people. Now her social media showed me another side of her as well. In April of 2024, she posted from New York City with a caption city girl. In November of 2024, she was in clear water Florida, standing with her feet in the ocean and looking out to the water. And there's also prom and homecoming photos with big groups of her friends. And her friends filled the comments with how much they loved her. On Facebook, there's a photo of her with her soccer friends. And Caroline is right up front throwing up a peace sign, and the girls behind her are making pretty ridiculous faces. And if you've ever had a big friend group like that, you know exactly what it feels like. Her family summed it up in one line. Caroline was cherished by her family and friends because she was easy to love. Easy to love. That's what they chose to say about her. The people at Penn West had only just started to get to know her and they saw it right away. Her new teammates described her as happy and bubbly and always smiling on and off the field. Her college coach Pete Curtis called her a sweet beautiful soul. And the university's athletic director described her as a bright and kind young woman with so much ahead of her. Because by the middle of August 2026, Caroline's a new life had already started. She had moved into her dorm. She was on campus. She was practicing with her new teammates before the semester even began. Her name was on the official Vulcan's roster. Caroline Heinz, number 21, defense, freshman from McMurray, Pennsylvania. Classes were set to start on Monday, August 24th. And her first college game as a Vulcan was on the calendar, August 29th. Caroline was posting, but how excited she was to be on that soccer team. She was excited. She was ready. After years of early practices, long drives to games, two lap races that burned her lungs and late night studying. It was all finally starting. And on the evening of Wednesday, August 19th, after dinner with her family, she got into her Jeep Cherokee to head back to that new life. To understand the story, you do have to understand the geography. Because this case really happens across three different places. And they're all within a half hour of one another. So let's start with home, McMurray, Pennsylvania. It's not actually its own town. It's a census designated place inside Peter's Township in Washington County. It's part of the greater Pittsburgh metro area. And in the 2020 census, about 4,700 people lived in McMurray itself. So we're not talking about a big city. We're talking about the kind of place where high school football games are the event of the week. And parents are in the bleachers and they've known each other since their kids were in kindergarten. It wasn't always the suburb it is now. McMurray got its name from the farmers who worked the land there, including a man named Levi McMurray. And most of its history is from this farm country, fields, barns, long stretches of just nothing. And then, of course, Pittsburgh grew. The highways came, the farmland slowly turned into subdivisions, cul-de-sacs, and shopping plazas. Today, it's one of the most affluent suburbs that South Pittsburgh has to offer. The median household income in McMurray is just above $150,000. Nearly everyone owns their own home. The schools are the kind that people will specifically move there for because the district is so good. And Route 19 runs right through it, lined with stores and coffee places and restaurants. There's an intersection that locals call Donaldson's Crossroads, and that has been a landmark there for generations. And if you've ever been to a town like this or lived in one, you know the deal. You cannot just run the grocery store and sweatpants without seeing three people, you know. There is also one place everyone meets up after games. It was a really close knit community. Everyone has everybody else's mom's number. It's the kind of town people actually describe a safe quiet, a great place to raise a family. That phrase comes up in every single article written about McMurray. And I honestly think that phrase is going to do a lot of work in the story, so remember it. And it isn't isolated either. Pittsburgh is just a short drive, so you can get to jobs, hospitals, concerts, the airport, the big city stuff, without living right in the middle of it. So you kind of have the best of both worlds. So that is where Caroline grew up. These are the fields that she played on. This is the high school she graduated from. Just a few months before all of this happened. Now if you drive about 20 miles south, you are in a completely different kind of place, California, Pennsylvania. It's a burrow sitting right near the river, about 35 miles from Pittsburgh. And it has around 5,400 people living there as of 2020. And if you're wondering where it got its name, California, while it was founded in 1849, right when California gold rush was in the news. And the founders picked the name to symbolize growth and prosperity. Basically a marketing decision. This was coal country, serious coal country. At one point, it was the largest soft coal mine in the world. And then one by one, the mines started to go away. And what stayed was the University, Penn West, California, which was founded in 1852. It sits on 294 acres. This campus is right along the river. And as I told you, most people just call it Calu. And in a town, of only about 5,000 people, you can just imagine that this university is pretty much the center of everything. It's the heartbeat of this city. The students are the economy in this area. When the semester starts, the town fills up. And when it ends, the town empties out. It also has a reputation. I mentioned this before, as a safe place. In 2015, Safewise ranked it among the top 50 safest colleges in America. The Princeton Review has it listed among the best colleges in the Northeast for years running. And the school puts both of those facts on its own website right at the top of its fast facts page. That's how the town sees itself. Now think about that and think about the moment we're in right now. It was August 2026. Yes, it was just last month. And I know that most of you who are not new here know that I don't usually discuss cases that have just happened. This is something that I am planning to do going forward at least once a month. The week of August 19th, that campus, was in what I would refer to as a strange in between state that only exists for just a few days a year. Classes haven't started yet. They were set to begin the following Monday, August 24th. But the students are trickling in. They're hauling laundry baskets, their little mini fridges up to their dorm rooms while their parents are taking photos and saying goodbye. The athletes were already there because athletes have to arrive first because they're practicing in August and Caroline was one of them. If you've ever moved into a dorm room, you know that's specific feeling. Everything kind of smells like cleaning supplies and cardboard. The things in your room are not up yet like your posters. It doesn't feel like your own space yet. You don't even know where everything is. You've met about six people that probably live close by in other dorm rooms and you're trying to remember their names. And there's this exciting but terrifying but wonderful sense that your actual life is about to start. That is where Caroline was. Moved in practicing nine days out from her very first college game on August 29th. And then there's the third place that I want to tell you about. It's the one in the middle. Between Mick Murray and California, sits North Strabain Township. This is a suburban township just outside the city of Washington in the same county. It's kind of a place you just drive through without really stopping and thinking about it. Neighborhoods, coldest acts, driveways, basketball hoops. I'm putting it on the screens. You can kind of get a feel of it. On a Wednesday night in August, you might see some portraits on a TV in the window, but not much else is happening there. It's on its way from Mick Murray to California. And that's going to come into play here. Because on the night of August 19th, I told you that Caroline made a stop. A stop that on a map looked like nothing. A time-minute detour on a 20-minute drive-all. But her dad saw that stop and actually didn't even think it was suspicious. And there's a fourth place that we're going to get into for theirself. Out of the suburbs into the two-lane roads in the dark farmland, the old national pike, scenery hill, feelsville. Now this is country in a way that Mick Murray hasn't been in 50 years. That stretch of road is going to be important for another year. For now, just hold that picture in your head. A safe affluent suburb where everyone knows one another. A small river college that's proud of being one of the safest in the country and the in-between. An ordinary township with ordinary looking homes and driveways where nothing bad is really supposed to happen. But it did. Now, Caroline wasn't spending that whole summer alone. There was a boy in her life. His name was Royce Moser. He was 18, same as her. And he had just graduated too from Canon, McMillan High School, over in Cannonsburg, different school, same county, about 50 minutes up the road. Cannonsburg actually shares a zip code with McMurray. So these are neighboring worlds, but they were not classmates. They did not grow up in the same hallways or go to the same pep rallies. How they met, I honestly cannot tell you. It's not in anything that I've personally read. If you know, leave it in the comments. Maybe mutual friends. Maybe sports. Maybe the way everyone meets up now through a phone. That detail just wasn't out there that I could find. What I do know is that by the spring of 2026, they were together. Another thing is we're not seeing it unfold in the moment. We are also really only looking at social media and we all know that's everyone's highlight reel. But the highlight reel is what we've got. And the highlight reel from Not Spring looks exactly what you would expect from two seniors in their last few months of high school. In early June, Caroline posted her prom photos. She's in a floor length mint colored gown. And he's right next to her in a dark suit with a matching mint colored bow tie and a pink boon air. Her caption was just prom with an exclamation point. And his comment underneath was best two nights ever with you. Two nights because they went to both proms hers and his. Have you ever dated someone from another school? You know, that's kind of like a dream scenario. You get double the dances, double the dresses, double the photos, and there were pictures of the two of them at his graduation as well. She actually put his handle in her Instagram bio with a little pink heart, which for an 18-year-old girl, you know what that means. I even have I think like my husband's with a black heart, but it's a declaration. That's telling everyone who sees it. That's my person. He's mine. I'm proud of him. And on his birthday, she posted, celebrating you is so easy. I love you. So that was the spring. prom graduation a summer ahead of them and a girl who was clearly happy. But the summer was also a countdown. And they both knew that. Caroline's life was about to change. She had signed to play college soccer. She had a roster spot, a number, a first game on the calendar, a major picked out, and a medical school holding a seat for her. In August, she moved into her dorm and started practicing with her new team. And sure, it was only 20 minutes down the road, but that 20 minutes can be a whole new world. Royce, unfortunately, was not going with her. I mean, he had just graduated high school himself. He was not enrolled in college yet. He was staying right where he was, moving between his dad's place and his mom's house. And that brings up the conversation that almost every couple in this situation has to eventually have. Do we stay together? Do we try long distance? Do we see what happens and just let it be what it is? And it'll just unfold. Dating someone in your senior year, you would know this exact conversation and where you would have it. Maybe you both sit down at the house for what is usually a serious conversation. Maybe it's on the phone at two in the morning. Maybe it's in somebody's driveway. And for young people, it is a genuinely hard conversation to have because you're 18. And you're being asked to make a decision that the future you can't even really picture yet. One of you's walking into something brand new and the other ones watching you walk. I mean, millions of people have this conversation every August when they're transferring to a new school, they're going to college and their high school sweetheart might be left behind. Caroline and Roy has had only been together for four or five months by August. That is not a year's a long love story. It's a spring, a prom, and then a summer together. And they hadn't really worked it all out. They hadn't finished that conversation yet, which brings us to Wednesday, August 19th, the middle of the week, the middle of August, the dead stretch of summer. I already told you it's how I started this story, but now I want to go back and go into more detail. So that night, Caroline came to her family's home and Peter's township for dinner. This wasn't a goodbye. This was just dinner. She had already been going back and forth. Her parents, her sister, they were all eating together. And like every 18-year-old and a family dinner, her dad noticed she was on the phone going back and forth with someone most of the evening. There was nothing unusual about that. But when it was time to go, she mentioned she might stop a target on her way back. Just last minute stuff. The kind of short run that every college student makes in the final days before classes. Her father said goodbye to her, and this was around 9.30 pm. And here's where I need to tell you about this safety net that this family had built, because it's the reason that we know what we do about that night. Caroline's parents could see her location through Apple's fine-my. But her dad had also put an Apple air tag in her Jeep. Now I know this could be kind of controversial, but I also know as a parent, you might understand this more than others. You can let go of the curfew. You can let them pack their car up and go to college. You can stand in a driveway and watch them pull away and tell yourself this is exactly what's supposed to happen, but you're still wanting to know where they are. So that night, after she left, her dad checked. He wanted to make sure she was okay. And he realized she didn't go to target. The map showed that she had made a stop. She had gone to her boyfriend's house. Her boyfriend's dad's house in North Treban. And that wasn't alarming either. She mentioned she also might stop by there. Her family knew voice. This was a boy from the prom pictures I showed you. Her dad saw the pin sitting on that house and he already knew about that stop on a route that he already knew, on her way back to her dorm. So at that point in the night, there was nothing wrong. She stayed there about 30 minutes. And then a little after 10-15, the dot started moving again. But here's where things got concerning. It wasn't moving towards campus. It went south down Route 40, the old National Pike out towards Scenery Hill, the place I showed you. That's out where street lights are nowhere to be seen. And the road gets narrow. And there's nothing but dark roads and farmland. And then the phones last location came in out near 2501 National Pike. And then there was nothing. No more movement, no more updates. The phone just stopped reporting her location. But I also want to be fair here. In this point in time and real time, this is not automatically a crisis because phones die. The service can be spotty. You can take a detour. Sometimes kids don't answer. They're with their friends. They forget to text back. Every parent has talked themselves down from this point, exactly the situation. So her family called her. and they texted her, and nothing came back. She was supposed to check in when she got back to her dorm, like she always did, and she never did that night. And this is the part of that story I think about the most, the waiting. It's a mom and dad in their house, refreshing an app, looking at the phone, and there's no dot lighting up. It's that internal bargaining you're doing, oh, she's fine, you know, her phone died, she's with a friend, she's unpacking. It's that hour where you keep telling yourself, you're being ridiculous, but you keep checking. And again, checking again and again. But the phone was just gone from the map. But the thing was, the air tag wasn't. And I thought that was so smart that you did that. The little tag sitting in her Jeep was still reporting her location. And her dad could still see where that Jeep was. It wasn't a target, it wasn't at the dorm room. It wasn't anywhere on the way to either one of those places. Her Jeep was in California, Burrow. It was sitting in a parking lot beside the California area public library on a street called Wood Street. And it was after midnight at the library that would have been closed for hours, so why is her car there? Now, I could think of a million reasons why. I mean, we're her and her boyfriend going on a little drive, where they, you know, I don't know, making out in a parking lot. But this family knew Caroline. So think about what he's looking at. His daughter said where she was going. She did not mention this location. Her phone has gone completely dark. She's not answering anything. And now her vehicle is parked in an empty lot next to reclose building in the middle of the night. So this is when this father stops telling himself that she's fine. And so he makes a call that no parent wants to make. The call that you will spend your whole life hoping is an overreaction. He had to call the police. And he asked them, please go look for my daughter. At that point, everything anyone knew about Caroline and her whereabouts came down to one thing, that small piece of electronic device in her Jeep, still quietly sending out a signal from this dark parking lot on Wood Street. And a few minutes later, officers do pull in. And let me set this scene for you. It's dark the early morning hours of Thursday, August 20th. At California Barrow Police Officer turns onto Wood Street. Now Wood Street runs along the edge of town. On one side, there's a row of houses and apartments. Lights on and a few windows. People probably still up watching TV. And the other side, railroad tracks run alongside the woods. And past the trees down the slope is the river. And the campus is close by. And it's not late enough that the town is gone completely quiet or anything. But the streets are not full of people either. And there's this library and the parking lot. It's closed, as I said. And there's no other cars there, except for one vehicle, a gray Jeep Cherokee. The officer who responded that night was officer Christopher Guffey. And I want you to understand what he thinks he's doing at this point. This is a welfare check. It's one of the most routine calls a police officer who can get a parent, can't reach their teenager. 99 times out of 100, their phone just died. Or they're asleep. And the officer just calls the parent back. It says, everything's fine. Go to bed. So he pulls in and he starts with the vehicle. There is no movement inside. Nobody's in the driver's seat. No one's standing nearby. So he runs his flashlight over at the lot. And then towards the tree line, sweeping the beam across the woods and in the darkness, pass the trucks, looking for any sign of a person out there. Because if a car is there, she should be there. But there's nothing. The dark is giving him no clues. So he comes back to the Jeep and he gets closer this time. He raises the flashlight to the windows and the beam crosses the front seats and he sees something. It's a substance. But the officer actually wasn't sure what he was looking at. He later described it as maybe thinking it was makeup or wine, something spilled. Because that's what your brain does. Your brain reaches for the most ordinary explanation first, even when you're a police officer, even at midnight in empty parking lot. I was thinking, oh no, that's possible. But hey, the brain does weird things. Mine would go right to the worst case scenario. He keeps walking around and comes to the back and something catches his eye on the vehicle itself, on the doors, something on the surface that doesn't belong. When I watched this footage, I got the chills when his flashlight lands on it. It's blood on the back of that Jeep. And to me, it looked obvious that this was blood on this car. And this is why he looked in the back window. He stepped towards a rear of that Jeep. He raised his flashlight to the rear glass and he looked into the cargo area and this part stuck with me. It's the way that he screamed for his partner. So let's watch. All right, control. It goes right through any EMS here right now. I can't just see one of the back of this car right now. After his partner rushes back, they started looking for a baton to break the window and this batch asked him if she's breathing. I need a disown unit, any available in the area, please. [banging] [banging] 2330 is keep breathing. Negative. I got blood everywhere. In the background, you can hear a siren. It's just chilling. The other officer is bang on the window asking her to wake up. Duffy, again, is calling for EMS. He's like, "Get someone you're now." He wants them to pick up the pace. He breaks the driver's side window and that gets him inside. [banging] Control 23 at Brooklyn Window. We got access to the car. And then they break the back window as well. And now they're able to unlock the hatch. [banging] We have a call you headed down there. Give me a second. I'll let you know. [banging] They decide not to touch anything. And units are on the way to block off the streets with crime scene tape. He makes it clear. It looks like she was put in that trunk. Like she was carried and placed inside. This officer has already understood the most important fact in this entire case. Whatever happened to this young woman did not happen in that parking lot. Someone left her there. Now the ambulance arrives. EMT Dan Harvey checks on the young woman. There's no pulse. There's no heartbeat. There's nothing that anyone can do. She's pronounced dead at the scene. And this is a homicide scene. He calls for Pennsylvania State Police. He calls for backup units to block off the street. Crime scene tape goes up on the 100 block of Wood Street. And within minutes, that quiet street is full of lights. Burrow police, EMS firefighters, campus police, right and blue across that front of that closed library and the house is across the road. And the people in the house is coming out, coming to their windows, trying to see what is happening on the quiet little street at one o'clock in the morning. The trunk of that Jeep stays closed. Because now everything about that vehicle is evidence and no one's touching anything until a detective and the state police get there. And then there's this other thing happening at the same moment. I could hardly think about this part because her father is on the way there. He's the one that called it. He told him where to look. He's driving down from Peter's township toward Wood Street in the middle of the night. And he doesn't know yet what they have found. One of the officers at the scene says out loud. He doesn't want to be the one to tell him, but somebody was going to have to. Somebody was going to have to stand in that parking lot and tell this father his daughter's dead. Caroline Heights was dead. She was the one lying in the back of her own Jeep with blood all over her. It's worse than a parent's worst nightmare. It's something unbelievable. And that air tag is what led all of these people to the street. When the detectives got there, that parking lot became the most important piece of real estate in Washington County. And I want to explain what actually happens at this first point. Because I know we watch a lot of true crime and the story isn't always. What actually happens because TV rewrites a lot of things differently all the time. Nobody just opens the trunk and starts pulling things out. The scene actually gets frozen photographs from every angle are taken before. anything is moved. At least this is what's supposed to happen. Everything documented in place because where a thing is sitting is often more important than what it is itself. Cheyenne custody starts immediately, meaning every item that leaves out lot has a paper trail from that moment forward. So that months later in a courtroom, nobody can argue that it was contaminated or confused with something else. And the reason all of that matters, especially here, is that this crime scene was a vehicle, which is unusual, and which tells you things that a house never could. So here is what the Jeep said. Caroline was in the cargo area in the Rear Shops Curled Up, face down in the back of that vehicle. And she had two wounds that were immediately apparent, one to her lower hip and one to her chest actually to her heart. There was blood on the front drivers area of the Jeep, the exterior of the driver's side door and on the rear hatch and inside that cargo compartment. Now let me walk you through what a detective reads in all of what I just told you. Blood in the front in the driver's area meant that she was at one point in the driver's seat. That is where this started. Blood on the outside of the driver's door means she wasn't only inside that vehicle, something happened at that open door. And blood in the rear compartment with her body, obviously in that area, that is where she was bleeding out when she was moved. She did not climb back there. Somebody put her there. Then something important to note, there was fresh grass on her body and inside her mouth. And there's none inside the Jeep. And there's no grass right in that asphalt parking lot beside the library. Now, fresh grass on her body and her mouth means at some point, Caroline was on a lawn and that she was face down, breathing or trying to breathe while her face was in the dirt and grass. Now that parking lot on Wood Street didn't really have the right answer for them because they looked, there was grass there, but there was nothing disturbed, which meant that was not where whatever happened occurred. Somewhere out there, there was a lawn where a struggle happened and detectives now had a physical piece of that lawn in front of them. So it roughly one in the morning, well, all of this is going on. Investigators do the thing they always do first. They talk to the person who reported it and more information. They met her father at the scene and right away, he was informed that he needs just come right down to the police station. This was as all these lights were flashing and so many law enforcement officers were standing around. He had to have known what was happening, but he went to the California Bureau Police Department. And I don't even know how to describe properly what an interview like that must have been like. This is a father who just found out his teenage daughter is dead. But in that moment of grieving, the police also need information from him immediately because the first few hours of the homicide investigation are everything because evidence to grades, witnesses are going to go missing. People start deleting things. We know the drill and he gives them everything. He tells them they Caroline left his home in Peter's township around 9.30 pm. He tells them she said she might go to Target on the way back to Dorm, but she never did. He says that he watched her location on his phone and that she stopped at a house in North Sherbane Township. And he can tell them exactly which house. It wasn't just somewhere. It was an address to 29 William Drive, her boyfriend's father's house, where her boyfriend was staying. He tells them she was there about 30 minutes and that she started moving south afterward down Route 40 towards Scenery Hill and where her phone last reported. And then it went silent. All the calls and texts were unanswered. By the air tag, was the only reason anyone found her that night. He tells them her boyfriend's name Roy Samoser, also 18 years old. And maybe he knew where she was going after she left his house. They definitely would need to speak to him because he was the last known stop. He's a location on a timeline. They're trying to build that timeline and follow it wherever it goes. But that address does something enormous for this investigation because now they have a lawn, right? Most houses have a front yard, not all of them, but fresh grass on a girl, found an apartment with no signs of grass disturbed there. And now they also have a house where her vehicle sat for 30 minutes. It's not proof of anything. But it is a thread and they need to look into it. It's all that they have. So now the investigators have two questions. And they're going to spend the rest of the night and the next day chasing both of them, the first one. If she was in the driver's seat when it started and she ended up in the back, someone else had to drive that Jeep to California, Burrow, who was behind the wheel. And the second question, her Jeep did not teleport. It traveled from North Trebane south on Route 40 and then to a library parking lot for 20 some miles. That is a long drive. Cars get seen. Cameras do exist. Somebody somewhere has that Jeep on camera recorded. Officers were already walking the block because here's the reality. This is a crime that's happening now in 2026. Cameras are basically everywhere and almost none of them belong to the police. They're adorable cameras. They're little ones outside on a corner of a business. They're a camera that somebody mounted over their driveway because I don't know, their neighbor kept parking too close to their car. There is no master switch. Somebody has to physically walk the street and look for them. So that's what they did. The library lot, wood street, the houses, the apartments across the road, anything with the lens pointed anywhere near that parking lot. There's a clock running on this. Home cameras do not keep footage forever. We all know that, right? They record over themselves sometimes in days. Sometimes people don't even have a subscription that records anything. So the thing they need most might not even exist and just a few hours. So time is of the essence. And that canvas paid off because someone's camera was pointed in the right direction at the right time. Investigators got footage of Caroline's great Jeep Cherokee in the vicinity of the California area public library that night. And it had a driver in it. And they could tell it was a young male beyond the wheel of her Jeep. And right away, not just that, something looked off. He was wearing blue latex gloves. And I'm going to pause right now because I want you to just imagine that. That's on a detail that these investigators are just going to brush to the side. Blue latex gloves, why would you drive with gloves on? I mean, I know. Some people way back in the beginning of COVID, they didn't know better, right? We didn't know what was going on. Germs could have been everywhere. People wore gloves driving. I remember seeing in California, but this is somebody thinking about finger prints while driving a vehicle with a young woman in the back of it. Because why else would you be wearing gloves? And in the footage, he's not alone. The Jeep was following behind another vehicle. And the person driving that second car was a woman. And she's also wearing blue latex gloves. Imagine seeing that. I always feel like putting myself in a detective shoes and thinking, okay, that must be exhilarating because they have found what could be a huge clue. But it's also confusing. Like, who are these people? They didn't know. But in space of just one piece of video, the investigators have gone from a search of one person to now a search of two people moving in a line in a convoy in the middle of the night. One in the victim's vehicle, one leading the way, both of them have gloves on. Now, they couldn't get a clear look at the woman's face. But you know what? That didn't matter because they have something better. They have a license plate on that second vehicle. Pennsylvania registration, KWX1792. A dark blue Volkswagen Jetta. And that Jetta came back registered to Rachel Moser, 56 years old. If that last name seems familiar, you would be right. I've mentioned it before. It's the same as Caroline's boyfriend, Royce Moser. It's his mother. And at that moment, the male and the Jeep stops being an unidentified young man and investigators identify him as eight general Royce Moser, the boyfriend, the last stop on the map. The name Caroline's father had given them in the police station a few hours earlier. Think about how fast this case moved. That's 2026 for you. Her father calls in the welfare check just after midnight. She's found around 1225. And by that morning, investigators had a glove driver in a Jeep, a second glove driver leading him, a plate number of registration, a mother and an address. I'm going to tell you right now, I've done 100 cases. You probably know you've watched many. That is not how most homicide investigations go. Most of them are at a snail's pace. This one had a name and address in a few hours. And there is a straight line from that speed back to this dad who put an air tag inside his daughter's car. I have one in my baby's stroller because a lot of times where she goes, she goes with a stroller, whether that's with my husband, with a babysitter. And I want to know where she is. So I think it's something very valuable for anyone to do with a loved one that they're wanting to know and keep track of. But I'm sure some people can see it as stalking in some ways if you're like putting it in your your boyfriend. car without his knowledge, but in this case, I think it was very important and invaluable. So now police want to talk to both the boyfriend and his mother, but they need to find him, and they did. They were together at Rachel's house at 2857 Main Street, and this is in Beale's ville. That's Al Pasiner Hill, along the old National Pike, which if you were paying attention to the map earlier, it's in the direction that Caroline's phone was traveling when it went dark. Now this is an interesting house. Now first glance, I was like, wow, it's a big house. But when I look closer, it's kind of run down. The doors have paintshipping off, bricks from the structure like falling out. There's random tools and a trailer in the front yard. Granted, this was Google Maps a year ago. It doesn't look that different today, because you're going to see it again in police footage. Both of them were taken from that house to the Pennsylvania state police barracks in Washington County. They had questions, because investigators have a whole lot of dots they want to connect. What happened in between Caroline's topping is her boyfriend, and him and his mother driving her body out to a parking lot wearing gloves. And they were about to be told a lot more than they actually expected. Now this is Thursday morning, August 20th, Pennsylvania state police barracks. Two interview rooms, two different people kept apart. Mother talks first. Now before we get into what Rachel said, I want to explain what's happening procedurally, because this is one of those moments where people want to yell at their screens about rights and lawyers. At those point, Rachel has not been charged with a crime with anything. She's a woman whose car showed up on a video. Police just want to hear her version. And people in her position talk all the time. For a reason, and it's a very human one, they think they can explain it. They think, if I can just get my story out, this will all go away. It's pretty remarkable that nobody had to break Rachel down. Nobody had to confront her with evidence that she didn't know they already had. She just sat down and told them that in the early morning hours, her son called her in a panic that he needed her help. He needed to get a car back to Penn West, California campus. And he needed a ride back home afterward. And once she asked him why, he actually told her what he had done. At first, I was given this mom the benefit of the doubt, oh, okay, something happened with the car. He just maybe, you know, he didn't want to get in trouble. Maybe borrowed. He wasn't supposed to. I don't know. But no, he told her. He had stabbed Caroline with the knives that he grabbed from the kitchen and his dad's house. He told her Caroline fell out of her Jeep. And then he picked her up and put her in the back hatch of her own vehicle. And then he said something on that phone call. I don't think I'll ever get out of my head. He told his mother he wasn't even sure whether Caroline was alive or dead. So let's stop here because that's the moment that there's a fork in the road and this entire story. And it happens on a phone call between a mom and her son. He just told her I stabbed my girlfriend. She's in the back of her own vehicle. I don't know if she's still alive. She could be, right? If you don't know, then she could be. Every option is still open at that moment. She could call 911. She could tell him to call 911. Tell him to get Caroline to a hospital. Now tell him pull over, check on her, scream at him, any of it. One of those phone calls could have meant paramedics would get Caroline to the hospital fast enough for something to be done. But this mother did none of that. Think about it. And I know if you're a mother, you already are as a mom. This could be a tough situation. It could be your kid versus someone else's. But there's only one right answer call for help. And no point did this mother tell her son to call 911. And no point did she tell him to drive Caroline to a hospital. And no point did she tell him to pull over. Instead, she comes to his rescue. Yeah. She decides to help him and help here. Doesn't mean help him get help for Caroline. Because let's face it, she's the one in trouble. Her life is on the line. But the way Rachel was looking at it was her son's was also on the line if he gets caught. Because at this point, to these two people, Caroline has stopped being a girl and she became a problem. You can love your child. I want to be clear about that. You can tell on them and not see it as destroying them. Because whatever she thought she was doing for her son that night, what she actually did was take an 18 year old's worst moment and make sure there was no way back from it. If she called 911, maybe Caroline would live. And if Caroline doesn't live, her son is still an 18 year old with no criminal record who made a call for help. That is different than walking him through the ones that are choices that guaranteed the maximum possible destruction for everyone, including him. And she kept going. Rachel told investigators that afterward, on the drive back from Californiaboro, her son said something to her. He said he had demons. And that the demons had told him he had to hurt Caroline. What demons? I was like thinking in his mind, in his ears, is he hearing voices. So just hold on to that for the moment because it's going to be a big part of his interview, which we haven't gotten to yet. Then investigators asked Rachel the obvious question, why are you wearing blue latex gloves? This is where things stop making logical sense because every one of you that are watching knows why. But she has a different answer. Of course she does. She said she had picked up dog poop before leaving her house. And she forgot to take them off dog poop. She said she was wearing surgical gloves in the middle of the night, one o'clock in the morning driving pretty much a convoy to a college town, 20 some miles from her house with her son falling behind it in his girlfriend's deep, both of them wearing an identical pair of gloves because she forgot to take them off after cleaning up her dog poop. The timing of that dog pooping is impeccable or the worst timing ever. Nobody in that building is going to believe that they didn't. And then something happened that took her explanation and just totally blew it out of the water didn't happen. After she was in custody, Rachel told a state trooper. She did use restroom. And as he walked her towards that bathroom, he noticed she was trying to slip a pair of what do you think blue latex gloves into her pants. This woman still had the gloves on her. She was still trying to get rid of the gloves inside of a state police barracks. And after telling them the gloves were about dog poop, she's trying to covertly throw them away. But in all seriousness, this is nothing to laugh at. And I know that but some of this is so absurd that it leaves you thinking like how could you think that made sense? Her interview lasted about three hours. And when it was over, the Pennsylvania state police had something they never get this early, a firsthand account of the crime delivered by someone who wasn't there when it happened, but describing what the person who was there told them happened at night. They now knew that a knife had come out of a kitchen at a father's house. They knew that Caroline had been in the driver's seat and had come out of that vehicle which perfectly lines up with the grass. They knew someone had put her into the back. And they knew there had been a phone call between Rachel and her son in the middle of the night. And she helped him not only move that vehicle, but her body. Everything she said also explained things at the scene that police already knew. The grass, the blood in the front and in the back, the Jeep sitting this lot for no reason to be there other than someone moved it, tried to discard it. And at this point, the only account that actually happened in that driveway existed inside of the head of this teenager that's sitting in a room down the hall. So around midday that same day, Thursday, August 20th, Roy Smoser was sitting in an interview room. He had just graduated from high school a few months before this. And now he's sitting across from police officers after his mother's three hour interview. After they have seen a video of him with gloves on behind the wheel of Caroline's Jeep and Caroline now in a morgue. And surprisingly, he talked to he admitted Caroline had come to his father's house at 229 William Drive in North Terbane Township. And this house is night and day compared to his mothers. It's big. It's also brick, but it's very nice. And it's surrounded by a lot of other rig homes in a very affluent neighborhood. They have a long driveway out front and it's on this narrow road with no street lights. So imagine how dark it could have been out there. Now there was an outside light near the sidewalk leading up to the house, but this is where Caroline's Jeep had been parked. It was in this driveway that the two of them had a serious conversation about their relationship and about her leaving for college. Now he told investigators he tried to hug and kiss her and that it wasn't welcomed. And then he said she said something to him that made him extremely angry. What was it? He couldn't remember. That's his account. According to the criminal complaint, he got angry at something that she said, but he could not remember what it was. Now, I want to flag that for you now because we're going to come back to it, because it's one of the kind of strangest things about this case other than the demons we're going to get there. But he remembers the conversation, he remembers being angry, he remembers what he did next in detail. The only thing that falls out of his memory is the one thing that would tell you the why. You can tell me what you think it may have been, I mean, we're speculating here. Wait till you hear everything else, because that's what detectives are trying to deduce. Then he gave them his explanation, he told police that he had a demon take over him and tell him to go get a knife and stab Caroline a demon singular just one took over him and told him to do it. Again, hold on to that, we're going to come back to it in a few minutes and it is going to look very different. Then he walked them through what he says happened next before Caroline drove off and backed to campus and back to safety, backed to her dorm and her very first week of classes. He told her to wait. He said he had something for her. He went into his dad's house directly into the kitchen and he took a knife out of a knife block that was sitting on the kitchen counter. Here is this poor unsuspecting girl waiting for a surprise and he comes back out to the driver's side of that jeep where she's sitting and he stabs her without warning. That is more than chilling, he stabs her in the chest. She falls out of her vehicle onto the front lawn and there it is, there is the explanation for the grass. That's the fresh grass that was on her body and in her mouth and detectives had been staring at that parking lot with no grass anywhere near it and now they know where it came from. A lawn and William drive, that is where Caroline spent the last moments of her life. He said he picked her up or he dragged her towards the back of the vehicle, opened it up, put her in the rear hatch area and then he got into the driver's seat of her jeep. He put the knife on the front seat, now that explains the blood that got there and then he made that call to the one person he knew would help his mother. We do tell our kids, call us no matter the situation, but you don't think that this will be it. He called it 1022, no answer, he called again a minute later at 1023 pm, again no answer. She calls him back at 1025 and they were on the phone for about 10 minutes. There were more calls after that at 1037 and again at 1122, but between the stabbing and the first phone call, there's a window and in that window he had a choice. Caroline was in the back of that jeep and he admitted he did not know whether she was alive or dead. He was sitting in the driver's seat of a vehicle that he could have driven to a hospital. He called his mother instead. Roy's told police that Rachel told him to come to her house and this is where his story and his mother's stories start going in very different directions because when Rachel told it, she was the one being called for help, but in Roy's version, she's giving him instructions about what he should do. He listened to her and he drove. Caroline's phone and Caroline's jeep traveled from North Treban, down route 519 to route 40 and out towards feels filled towards his mother's house. And somewhere along that road, Caroline's phone either lost signal or died or maybe, this is my speculation, he turned it off because he had no idea that any of this was being watched on an app because he didn't know her father had been tracking her location all night because he didn't know. There was an apple air tag sitting in that jeep quietly reporting where it was the entire time. He gets to his mother's house a little before 11 p.m., she was waiting for him and she was waiting with a can of disinfectant spray. Now, I'm imagining a bottle of lice all in her hand and she tells him, "Pull the deep into the garage so we can clean it." So she could help him clean it. According to Roy's, Rachel gave him the blue gloves. She put a pair onto and then mother and son sprayed disinfectant on this vehicle to wipe it down, wipe down what they could and doing all this while not leaving any prints behind. Well, it wasn't a good job. We know there was blood still all over. They didn't get it clean because you cannot clean that. Here's something the death investigation class has taught me. Blood is very hard to clean up, especially in large quantities. Blood is not like spilling a soda. It doesn't just sit on top of a surface waiting to be wiped away. Blood is mostly water, but it's carrying proteins. And the second blood leaves our body, it starts to change. There's a protein called fibronogen and it converts into fibrin, which builds this microscopic mesh that traps everything inside. That's clotting. That's what a scab is. So by the time they were standing in the garage with a rag, they're not wiping a bullet wood. They're wiping up something that's thickening into a gel. And that gel is holding onto whatever it landed on. So when you wipe, what happens? The edges smear out. Well, the middle says exactly where it is. You haven't removed anything. You've just spread it thinner and moved it around. And now it's in a wider area than it was before. And you know what people usually do in this instance? They panic because they've just made it worse. And the surface also matters because if this was, let's say, a sheet of glass, then maybe you'd have a chance. But this is inside of a vehicle. There's little creases on the seats. There's carpet. There's seat belts that have webbing. The cracks where the seat meets the center console. The seam where a door panel meets the frame. Blood absorbs into all of that down into the fibers into the gaps. And then it tries there, as that protein basically glues itself in place. Because that's what our blood is meant to do when we have a cut. Clock. And make a scab. And the harder you scrub, the deeper you drive it in. This by the way is exactly why that officer on Wood Street looked at the doors that Jeep and thought he might be looking at makeup or wine. Because smeared partially wipe drying blood doesn't look like what you might picture. It does appear like somebody spilled something and made a half-ass attempt at trying to deal with it. And there's another scientific thing I want to mention. Blood carries hemoglobin and hemoglobin carries iron. And that iron reacts with the chemicals investigators use in a lab and at the scene. Crime scene texts develop blood in rooms that look spotless to the naked eye bathrooms that have been scrubbed floors that have been mopped cars that could have been wiped down in a garage at 11 o'clock a night. The blood's still going to be there. It's under the trim. It's in the carpet. It's in the seams. It's everywhere. And when a forensic team goes out there and they go through that vehicle inch by inch with equipment that is specifically designed to find the microscopic invisible to the naked eye blood, it lights up. So when I tell you they wiped the Jeep down, they got it clean enough. They changed what a person could see. Let's just put it that way. They did not change a single thing about what a laboratory was going to find there. They were about 30 minutes doing this half as clean up job and then Royce told investigators that his mom told him to get in the Jeep and follow her towards the campus and they would leave it there with Caroline still inside of it close enough to Penn West to make it look like she made it back. And then something happened to her. I don't know what they were thinking, but that was their plan. Make it look like she got back to school. Royce drove the Jeep, Rachel led in her dark blue jetta, both of them still wearing gloves, which is exactly what was caught on Wood Street camera. That's the shot the cameras caught. They pulled into the library lot and they were there for less than two minutes just to park the Jeep with a young girl's body covered in blood in an empty lot in the back of it. Beside this closed library and they just walked away and then he got in his mother's Jeep and they drove back to her house. Caroline didn't go anywhere after this because she couldn't because either she was already dead or dying. So back at that house, Royce said his mother told him change her clothes. The clothes he had been wearing when he stabbed Caroline went into a washing machine. She told him take a bath and then take a shower. She cleaned the knife. She put it in a garbage bag and put it out in the trash behind their hole. All kinds of things went in the trash as well, including a white coach purse and the contents of her wallet. She must have thought she was so smart. Then they get back in the car again because Royce was going to stay the night at his mom's and he was going to need an overnight bag because he didn't have any of his things. So the two of them drove all the way back to his father's house on William Drive, back to that driveway where he stabbed Caroline and the house cameras caught them at 1231 AM. There's a still from a video from inside that house showing the two of them in his bedroom. Royce is packing. Still wearing the blue latex gloves. It's like they've become part of his outfit because I want to tell you right now. They're not doing anything to conceal his identity, friendsically at this point. Not when you're on camera, his mother is standing next to him with a piece of clothing over her arm and something else in her hand, helping her son pack a bag. And in the kitchen, Rachel picks up the knife block off of the counter, the whole thing, the knife block with the one empty slot in it, removing the evidence of where he got it from. And it's 1247. They left. And they stopped at a convenience store called Sheets on Route 19, and it's there. In that sort of parking lot that Roy's picked up his phone and texted Caroline. He's like Caroline, a few minutes later he texted, "Did you get home safely? Clever, but actually not doing what he thought, but it shows how cold and calculated they were. Caroline's phone was dead and Caroline was dead in the back of her own Jeep. In a parking lot, 20 some miles away and both him and his mom knew those things, because he was the one that put her there. Those texts were not for Caroline. Those texts were for whoever would eventually look at that phone. He's building a record of a worried boyfriend who didn't know where his girlfriend was. Nice try. They were back at Rachel's house at 1.20 am, six minutes later. They were back in her Jenna, and they were headed back toward California, Burrow. They stopped at a get-go. This is like a gas station and convenience store for about seven minutes. And then they drove towards the library. Whether they bought something, got gas, used a bathroom, or just sat there talking about their plan, I don't know yet. Nobody does yet. They got there at about 1.44 am on Wood Street, but by then it was lit up. This first responders crime scene tape. The welfare check had already become a homicide scene. Now, we don't know why they were going back there. The district attorney was later asked about it and said that there were wearing gloves and people can draw their own conclusions. So why do you think they went back there? Were they going to try to move her? Were they going to try to finish cleaning that Jeep? Were they seeing whether anyone had found her yet? We're probably never going to know that, but they didn't stop. When they saw the lights, they kept driving. They were back at Rachel's house at 1.55 am, and they stayed there for the rest of the night. But here's the part that I've been waiting to tell you. While all of this is happening, Royce is on his phone, and phones remember everything. At 11.12 pm, while he and his mom are in her garage with that disinfectant spray, he searched. It removes fingerprints from objects. At 12.09 pm, the same search again seven more times. Now, it's appearing in his search history 32 times. What does that mean? Does it mean he typed it repeatedly? Probably not. I mean, you could have been panic searching the same words over and over again, hoping for a better answer. But he could have clicked through different results one after the other. You know when you Google something, there is a bunch of different articles or websites you can click. It's on his phone, hitting a link, and then hitting back and re-logging that query over and over again. Someone opening a dozen results and bouncing back to the results page each time. It can generate a lot of entries from what was just really one search session. It could also be auto-complete, and it refreshes. Forensic extractions sometimes capture partial or repeated queries from suggestions, from typing, or even the page reloading, which can inflate the count. So 32, not sure that was him deliberately typing it 32 times, but he also typed how long to ring camera store video. That appears four times in a search history. And remember when I told you that cameras can record over themselves? He was worried about a camera. There's a camera at his father's house, he knew it. Then he asked, "What does God say about murder?" That was in a search five times. And then at 138 a.m. these two, one was, "What if a demon controlled you, yoi?" Because he spelled it wrong, and murder someone. There's a typo in it, because he's probably typing fast. Then he asked, "Can an 18-year-old get the death penalty?" That was in his search history seven times. He also searched California and Penn West, California because he needed to find the campus. The searching continued until about 145 a.m. Look at the timestamps. They drove past the crime scene at about 144. They saw the police lights, and within a minute of that, he was back on his phone. Now let me take you back to the demon. Royce told investigators that a demon took over him. This was on August 20th. Remember, I told you he searched what if a demon controlled you and murdered someone? That was at 138 in the morning on August 20th, and he's also being interviewed on August 20th, so roughly 11 hours earlier, while Caroline was already in the back of her Jeep, before he'd even spoken to a single officer. And it came less than seven minutes after he searched whether an 18-year-old could get the death penalty. Hmm. Now I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not going to try to diagnose him, but we're smart. We've seen things like this before, and I know what it looks like when somebody is shopping for a defense in the middle of the night, look at the pattern as a whole. It's not one search. It's like he thought that if he typed it in enough, the results would change, but it didn't. So by Thursday afternoon, police have two interviews and two versions of the same night. Surveillance video, a license plate number, a phone full of searches, and then they get a search warrant for Rachel's house. And they did not have to dig. The washing machine still had Royce's clothes. Rachel never even started the cycle. She put them in the washer, and she never turned it on. Now back in the trash, behind the house, the knife, the knife block, bloody cleaning rags, a blue latex gloves, a bloody plastic bag, and Caroline's white coach purse, along with everything that was in her wallet. The knife was a large chef's knife, and the DNA on that knife came back to Caroline. Investigators also get a search warrant for his father's house on William Drive. What was taken from that house has not been made public yet. The phones were extracted. And here's the thing about phone extractions. I think you know this, but deleting a call does not delete it. Royce and Rachel had removed their calls from their call histories. Again, nice try. Investigators recovered them. And this is how we know about the 1022, 2325, and 1037, and also the 1122. It's also how we know the rest of Caroline's last day, some of her texts and his texts. He had asked her at one point that night. If she was still an Instagram and TikTok, and then there was one where he was telling her that he was kind of getting impatient at 928 PM, he asked her to stop by his father's house for a hug and a kiss and her answer at 928 on Wednesday night on her way back to the dorm was, I don't know, we'll see. And at 938, she told them she was leaving. That's when she was heading back to college. One minute later, he called her and everything after that, she never got to tell anyone. Less than 24 hours earlier, Caroline had been sitting at a dinner table with her family. And now her boyfriend and his mother were being arrested. Royce was charged with homicide, tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse, and obstructing the administration of the law. Rachel was charged with hindering apprehension, tampering with evidence, obstruction, and abuse of a corpse. And both of them were also charged with conspiracy, conspiracy to commit tampering with evidence and conspiracy to commit abuse of a corpse. And I know that you can hear these charges, we hear them a lot and they don't always register. What they actually mean isn't always clear. Abuse of a corpse, that charge exists because the law says our body is not a thing. It's a person. It's owed dignity. So when you hear that charge in a case, what it means is that after Caroline was gone, she was moved, hidden, and abandoned in a parking lot to buy someone time. It's a conspiracy. Think you know this? It's an agreement. It means this wasn't a panicked kid making terrible choices. It's two people agreeing on a plan with each other, in a garage, throwing away things in a washing machine, in a garbage bag, two vehicles falling one another. But let's also talk about the speed in which all this happened. 1225 is when Caroline was found. And both of them were in custody by the evening. That's 12 hours from the flashlight in a parking lot with the police. So these two people being under arrest for homicide, that's sold in a single day. And the reason is this father installing an air tag who called the police instead of waiting until morning and a camera who caught these two people because it was pointing in the right direction. And by that evening, the media was on this case. Cameras were waiting outside of that Pennsylvania state police barracks in Washington County. They brought the mother and son out, separately in handcuffs, Royce came out first and reporters were just shouting. They were saying, did you guys get in a fight? Where were you going to take the body? Did you cheat on her? And he said nothing. He didn't have any reaction. No expression at all. He just walked out past the camera as to awaiting vehicle. And he never said a word. And then they brought his mother out. Rachel comes out barefoot with her hands over her face and reporter asked her why she helped her son cover up a murder. She denied it. And then seconds later, as she's been put in the back of a police cruiser, she apologizes. A reporter pushed a microphone toward her and asked why she was sorry. What are you sorry for? Tell us why you're sorry. And with her hands all over her face, she said that my son took a life. The reporters kept going. You said, you took a life, how did you do it? Where were you going to put the body? You said, you're sorry your friend took a life? Why did you help him? And that was it. The door closed. that her son took a life. She didn't even say Caroline's name. She didn't say a girl or my son's girlfriend. She said a life. An ascendance is structured entirely around her son. She's sorry about what he did. She's sorry about what happened to him in a sense. And she says it in a passive distant kind of way that people talk about something that happened to them rather than something they participated in. Seconds after denying should anything to do with it. She says that. And I've heard killers try to apologize the same way. I'm sorry this tragedy happened. You caused it. In this case, I don't wasn't Rachel, but it's kind of that same feeling. Meanwhile, 20 miles away, a family was beginning the worst week of their lives. And the community around them was just finding out. There's the evening. This was no longer a welfare check. These two names went public. In eighths, your own college soccer player was dead in a small town that was ranked one of the safest colleges in America. Now had police tape in a library parking lot, both Royce and Rachel were taken into custody and they were held there without bail Tuesday September 1st in the courthouse. They walked into that courtroom. But let me explain what this is. It's a preliminary hearing. And when you hear hearing, you sometimes picture that this would be a trial. It's not a preliminary hearing is a very first gate in a criminal case. And the question in front of the judge is not, do they do it? No one's deciding guilt. Nobody's deciding a sentence. There's no jury. The only question is whether there is enough for the prosecution or in this case, the common wealth, as it's called, to move the case forward. Is there a crime? And is there enough evidence that this person is connected to it? And that's it. The legal standard is low on purpose because the point of this is to filter out cases that should never have been brought in the first place, not to resolve the ones that should. And the judge here is also not a trial judge. Charles A. Tenney Jr. is a magistrate just strict judge. They handle cases at this very early stage. And one more thing you'll notice, the defense usually doesn't put on a case at the stage, not because they have nothing, but because there is no upside to that. The standards low, like I said, they're going to lose. And all they would do is show the prosecution their hand, their strategy months before it even matters. So defense attorneys, they sit, they listen, they take notes, they cross examine, and that's what they did that day. Prosecutors brought 38 pieces of evidence and six witnesses to reconstruct Caroline's final hours. They spent nearly two hours on their case. And at points, there were as many as 13 sheriff deputies inside that courtroom, which tells you how big this had gotten and how many people wanted to be in there. Caroline's parents walked in together hand in hand, and they sat in the front row. Royce and Rachel were brought in in shackles and orange gel clothing. Caroline's mother was sobbing, as Royce was brought into that room. Neither Royce nor Rachel looked at this family. Neither of them actually showed any emotion at all and at times, they leaned over and whispered to their attorneys. Royce is represented by assistant public defender Jake Mahavlov and Rachel by assistant public defender Patrick Fitch. And the Commonwealth started laying it all out. First up was officer Christopher Guffy, the California burrow officer who found Caroline. He testified about everything I showed you and they played his bodycam footage all 37 minutes of it. I want you to picture that. Caroline's mother and father in the front row, listening to a 37 minute video of that night that their daughter was found. As the evidence came in, her mother looked away, she wiped tears from her eyes and other points. She put her head down and she sobbed in her hands. Next, a detective named Matthew Collins testified about the digital evidence and the surveillance footage. And this is the part I walked you through. The license plate, the gloves seen on camera, the convoy, the phones, the deleted calls recovered by extraction. And then Pennsylvania State trooper Jessica Bishop took the stand. And she is one of those people that were in the interview rooms. She testified to what Royes told them that he tried to hug and kiss Caroline and she wasn't accepting it. It wasn't welcomed. She testified about him going inside his father's house, getting the knife and stabbing her in the Jeep. She testified about her three hour interview with Rachel. And then EMT Dan Harvey testified that when he arrived, Caroline had no pulse and no heartbeat. And through it all, neither defense attorney called a single witness. When it was over, Judge Tenney held all the charges for court, meaning the case moves forward out of this court and up to Washington County Court of Common Please, where felony cases are actually tried. And he added one more charge against Rachel that the district attorney requested criminal use of a communication facility in plain English that's using a phone to help commit or facilitate a felony. Both Royes and Rachel were ordered to remain in Washington County prison without bail. And afterward, district attorney Jason Walsh spoke to reporters and he said the thing that tells you where this case is heading. He said, I believe this is premeditated and premeditation matters a lot in Pennsylvania. And here's why first degree murder in this state requires a willful, deliberate and premeditated killing. It is the most serious grade of homicide there. And it carries a mandatory sentence of life without parole. Third degree murder is a killing with malice, but without that specific intent, and it carries a much different number. So the difference between those grades is a difference between this teenager coming home someday or him dying in prison. And also I know people get hung up on the word premeditation because they think it means planning it for weeks and it doesn't. In Pennsylvania, the time needed to premeditate can be very short in Florida, where I got my law degree. My criminal law professor taught us it can happen in the blink of an eye. Every state has their own statute that explains it. But the question is whether there was a conscious decision to kill, not how long the person sat with it. So think about what the Commonwealth has to point to in a driveway, Roy's told Caroline to wait. So he goes inside and gets a knife. He walks back out. He came around to the driver's side where she was sitting waiting for him. He could stop it. That's an argument. That's what those minutes could have been used for instead. They were not. And Walsh also said something else that day, which I think is very important. He credited Caroline's father. He said he's the reason why she was found and found that quickly. Absolutely. Now, he could not save her. What happened her was already decided in a driveway before he ever even looked at his phone. But he is the reason that she wasn't left in that parking lot overnight. This case was solved in 12 hours instead of 12 months. And he's the reason that nobody had time to finish cleaning up. When I say nobody, I mean Rachel and Roy's. He found her. And this case isn't over yet. It's barely even started. Like I said, usually only cover solved cases. But once in a while, there is just one that's so evil and senseless and also seemingly straightforward like this one with a confession. So I don't mind giving you everything we know right now. Roy's and Rachel Moser are still sitting there in prison held without bail. Their case has been moved to the Court of Common Police, which is where cases like this are tried in Pennsylvania. And there's a formal arrangement that's scheduled for October 13th. An arrangement is where the charges are going to formally be read and a defendant is going to enter a plea. And that is the next marker in this case. There is no trial date yet. And I just want to prepare you for how long this might take. Because a lot of you that are watching might expect a resolution in just a few months because look like I said straight forward, right? That's not usually how works. Even in a case like this one where the evidence came together in just hours. You're looking at a long road. There could be pre-trial motions or usually are discovery, meaning the defense has to get everything that commonwealth has, the extractions of the phone, the lab workups, the video, all of it. And they get time to have their own experts look at it. In a homicide case in Pennsylvania, a year or two before a trial starts is normal. Sometimes it's even longer. And I know that can be maddening because from the outside it looks like nothing's happening. It's stalling. But that slowness is also the thing that protects people who are actually innocent. It's the same machinery either way. The investigation itself also isn't finished. After that preliminary hearing, District Attorney Jason Walsh said that the investigation remains active and that electronic evidence was still being processed. And I'm sure I mean we're talking about social media posts, text messages, phone calls. There's a lot to uncover. And there's still so much that we don't know. I have so many questions. I want to see all their text messages. I want to understand what the relationship was like on the inside. Why after such a short time? Did this particular teenager find it unbearable that the girl that he liked or maybe thought he loved because I don't think he knows what love is because you decided to kill her. And ego is my only answer I can come up with because it's all too uncommon that a man is rejected and if they can't have her, no one can. We don't know what Caroline said in that driveway. The only person who heard it says he can't remember what made him angry. We don't know what investigators took from that house and that search warrant at his dad's. But we do know that Royce searched how long ring camera store videos and he searched at least four times or looked at four different articles in the middle of the night. And that tells me he was worried. about cameras. It does not tell us what that camera did or didn't capture. And we don't even know what his defense is going to be. He told police a demon took over him. So the obvious question is whether he's going to plead insanity. But here's what that would actually require in Pennsylvania. The standard is the McNaughton rule. And it asked whether at the time of the active person had a mental disease or defect that they either did not know what they were doing or did not know that what they were doing was wrong. And notice the second half of that, not knowing was wrong. People don't usually use this defense. It's usually hard to prove. However, Pennsylvania also has something called guilty, but mentally ill, which is a separate finding. It is not an acquittal. A person found guilty, but mentally ill is still convicted and sentenced with treatment ordered as a part of that sentence. And that's different than let's say Lindsay Clancy in Massachusetts. They have not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility. And with that, a defendant does not go to prison. They actually go to a facility until they're deemed fit to go back in a society. As of now, in this case, no defense has been announced. And what I will say is this, the searches are going to be a problem for that argument about whether he was, you know, insane, let's say, because it's consciousness of guilt. Evidence in this case is overwhelming. The gloves, the disinfectant, the washing machine, the text messages, texting a phone of a person that he knew was already dead, asking her if she got home safely. Don't know about that. And he even searched about demons. Those are not actions of someone who doesn't understand that what they did is wrong, quite the opposite. And then there's his mom Rachel, and she's facing her own charges. And her case is a separate question. She's in charge with killing anyone. She's charged with what came afterward. We actually know very little about her. She's 56. She doesn't have a criminal record. It almost had nothing when people pulled it up to try to look at it. She did have a guilty plea to a summary count of disorderly conduct back in 2024. Before that, she had been fined three times for driving without a valid inspection sticker, which is, I think, a registration sticker on your license plate, but that's it. That's the criminal history of a woman who, according to the Commonwealth, spent the night of August 19th, helping her son hide a girl's body. Sounds like the mother of Aiden Fauci. He's a 14 year old that stabbed 13 year old Tristan Bailey, the cheerleader. His mother, Crystal Smith, was arrested for tampering with evidence when their own home cameras caught her washing blood of her son's genes. That's another evil and heartbreaking case, and that's just as senseless as this one. We like our villains to have a trail, though. We want to look back and find some kind of pattern, a prior warning, something that could have let somebody see that this was coming, but sometimes we don't have that. Mothers in both of those cases, Tristan's and this one were probably thinking in the moment. They were maybe in survival mode, not making excuses, but it doesn't matter to the law, but let's just talk about Caroline for another minute or two. Outside, the California area public library in that parking lot where her jeep had been, it started growing almost immediately. This was a memorial. Flowers, candles, stuff animals, handmade signs. People came there who had never even met her before. 10 West students who had just moved into that campus were now grieving. Neighbors from the houses right there on Wood Street, one handwritten note read forever of Vulcan. A local fraternity left red roses. A flagpole nearby was flanked with roses and carnations and red, white and peach. And hanging from it was a single purple ribbon purple is a color of domestic violence awareness. And that ribbon on a flagpole, it was saying out loud what this was before the court even did. That weekend Caroline's family was doing what no family ever imagined. They were showing up on a Sunday, August 23rd, for a candlelight vigil. Hundreds of people came. The parking lot was full before the service even started. People were lining up and down the building waiting for the doors to open. Her pen west California teammates arrived together on a bus and some people came wearing jerseys with her name and number on them. A family actually asked for privacy and the vigil was closed to the media, which I think is the right thing to do. That hour belonged to them. A second visual was held the same night in Elizabeth Township, which is where her grandparents live and where her family has roots that go back decades. On Sunday, September 6th, her family held a gathering to celebrate her life at a funeral home in Peter's Township from four to six that afternoon, followed immediately by Memorial Service. Then there were the tributes and there were so many from her hockey team who honored her with sticks out for Caroline, lying there sticks outside some wrapped in purple ribbon and posting the photos. The first football game of the season, Peter's Township asked people to wear purple to both remember Caroline, but also raise awareness about domestic violence. Victory soccer club posted a tribute to their captain, the girl in number 57. They said her broken would be an understatement. They called her one of the happiest, most loyal, caring, genuinely kind people. You could have had the privilege of knowing. They said we are so proud of you, Caroline, and we always will be. Her pen west teammates said there were no words for the pain of losing their friend and teammate. And then they said this, she's so much more than what happened to her. And we want to honor and focus on who she was as a person. And she never did get to play her first game as a Vulcan, which was on the calendar for August 29th. And nine days after, her roster spot stayed up. Number 21 defense freshman, McMurray, Pennsylvania. Her teammates said they dedicate every game to her. A go fund me was started, the Caroline Hines Memorial. As I'm recording this, is raised over $75,000 towards a $90,000 goal. And that's from more than a thousand donors, a thousand people, most of whom have never met her. Her family through the state police released this statement that week. They said this is a parent's worst nightmare that it had been devastating for family, friends, and the whole community. The Caroline was loved by all that she was kind, smart, and a beautiful girl. And that they wanted justice for their sweet Caroline. They have not spoken to the media since this case broke something open in that county. And it's because of what this was and what it wasn't. There was no long history here, no documented fights, no restraining order, no police reports. This was four or five months of what looked like from the outside. And maybe the inside, like a completely normal teenage relationship, prom photos, Instagram posts. And that's exactly why people are so shaken. There's an instinct and a lot of us especially among women watching videos like this, to try to think of or find the mistake. What did she miss? What would I have caught? Caroline didn't miss anything. She stopped to have a hard conversation with her boyfriend in his driveway on her way back to campus. That's all she did. But there's something worth knowing. And it's one piece that I want every woman and every parent to walk away with. Advocates will tell you that separation is often the most dangerous period in a relationship, not the middle, not the end, the leaving when someone's breaking up, when they're moving on, when they're moving on to a new life. That's when the risk rises. And there can be no obvious warnings at all. So what's the message? Well, if someone you love is ending a relationship or if you are, there's a moment to pay attention to, not to panic, but to pay attention. Don't let the conversation happen alone and unannounced. Somebody should know where you are and when you're expected back and meet in public if you can. And if you're the friend or the parent, be the person who says text me when you leave and then actually notice when a text doesn't come in. Caroline's father noticed. I know it didn't save her life. And I'm so sorry for that. I'm not going to stand her and tell you that an air tag saves anybody because it didn't. But because he was paying attention and because he made that call, his daughter was found. That's not nothing. In a story where almost everything was taken, that's the one thing that father gets to keep. She was found. Young people get their message about what a relationship looks like from everywhere. Social media friends, sports, all of us have a role in this. We can talk to kids about healthy relationships and boundaries. And what to do when something doesn't feel right, which means the conversation you have with a young person in your life, especially one who loves and trusts you, should be about what love isn't supposed to look like and what it is from both sides. I'm not making excuses, but sometimes these conversations don't happen. So where does this leave us? With a lot of questions. When there is real news, I will bring it to you. Any actual developments, I'll put them on my community tab. And maybe I'll even do a follow-up video when everything's out in the open. Caroline, Jordan, Heinz was only 18. She was a big sister. She was nine days away from her first college game. She was going to be a doctor. There was a medical school already holding a position for her. Her coach said she was who the rest of us should try to be like a little happier, a little more positive, and a lot more kind. Her family said she was easy to love, and I'm sorry the world lost her. Thank you for being here. Thank you for staying till the end and spending this time with Caroline's story instead of just the worst night of her life. I'll see you in my next video. Bye.